Academic freedom in Tajikistan: western researchers need to look at themselves, too

The way people in the west research Central Asia isn’t always the most honest – and this shapes our understanding of academic autonomy.

Campus of the Tajik national university. Source: Personal archive.In
a recent Eurasianet
commentary, two respected figures of Eurasian studies, Edward Schatz and John Heathershaw, discuss the Tajik
government’s tightening control over the local academic sphere by
the government. They elaborate three options for funding bodies, western universities and field researchers: a refusal to cooperate
with Tajik state institutions and academics employed there; a
blacklist of institutions with a track record of repression, which,
in their opinion, in practice would be similar to “a comprehensive
boycott”; and finally, critical engagement and caution in entering
partnerships with Tajik state institutions.

As
a young, foreign researcher in Tajikistan who collaborates with
official bodies, I am particularly concerned with the authors’
conclusion:

“In
light of the deepening authoritarianism in Tajikistan, it is
difficult to see how most partnerships in the social sciences and
humanities with [Tajik] official bodies can either be academically
valuable or ethically permissible.”

In
her response to the article, Malika Bahovadinova discusses the
problematic use of the authoritarian label, the potential
consequences of further isolating the Tajik academic community
through boycotts and blacklists, and the power hierarchy between
foreign scholars and local researchers, with the latter often reduced
to the former’s data providers.

In my response, I would like to
discuss the partnerships of foreign researchers with Tajik official
bodies, which, according to the Eurasianet commentary, make research
like my own academically non-valuable and ethically dubious. I will
provide some reflections on the production of knowledge on Tajikistan
by foreign researchers and refer to my experience as an early-stage
female researcher with over three years of fieldwork in the country.
My research is mainly on development aid in Tajikistan and
interactions of international organisations with government
institutions and local communities.

April 2017: Tajik Academy of Sciences - celebrations of the day of science. Source: Personal archive.For
many years, knowledge production on Central Asia has been relegated
to the backstage of the research process. New knowledge was generated
and published, but the question of how
this knowledge was acquired was rarely discussed beyond informal
conversations and short methodological sections in the introduction
to academic books and articles. Today, the nuances of knowledge
production have made it to the frontstage. Scholars of Central Asia
and other parts of the world have started
reflecting on issues such as researcher safety while conducting
fieldwork and a new
volume examines research methods and risks in authoritarian
contexts, including in Central Asia. A number of events
on the subject have been taking place in European universities.

While
such debates on how
we do researchmight
be especially useful for younger researchers who have yet to start
their field work, the discussion appears to have already been skewed
by a safety and security lens. While it is important that we discuss
how to do research effectively and minimise risks in the field, we
are still neglecting to scrutinise ethics and power relations
embedded in research, and to promote collaborative research methods
and designs. We have just started unpacking
these matters,
but Schatz and Heathershaw call for a boycott of partnerships between
local and international researchers in Tajikistan.

I believe that building partnerships with state institutions is a necessary step for any foreign researcher who intends to conduct research on Tajikistan in Tajikistan

I
believe that building partnerships with state institutions is a
necessary step for any foreign researcher who intends to conduct
research on Tajikistan in
Tajikistan. This isn’t a matter of personal preference, but a
pre-requisite to operate in respect of local legislation. Whether we
like it or not, official bodies in a given country decide the rules
to conduct research there as a foreigner. Currently, in Tajikistan,
foreigner researchers need either to have a permission from the Tajik
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or secure an affiliation with a local
research institution, which is accompanied by the granting of a
research visa. Building these partnerships can be extremely lengthy,
complicated and bureaucratic. For example, it took me five months to
obtain an affiliation with Tajik
National University.
To do this, I had to build relationships with university’s
management and gain their trust, familiarise myself with the work of
various departments and collect a huge number of supporting documents
from the country and abroad.

Affiliation
to a local research institution, however, was not simply a piece of
paper. Once affiliated, I became involved in university matters. I
had a specific work plan, which was approved by the dean, as well as
deliverables to reach. I worked in collaboration with an academic
supervisor from the Tajik university, who involved me in various
projects. He invited me to participate in various local conferences,
asked me to write short articles for a local academic journal,
comment on his work, and even teach some of his classes. I joined the
local academic community at the research library.

Tajik
universities are underfunded, professors receive very low salaries
and classrooms are often cold in winter. There are no national
research grants available. Still, I have always met with interest
from the local academic community, and was often asked about my
progress and findings. I had a chance to discuss my research with
employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and some Tajik embassies
abroad. I never had to lie about my research topic and the critical
approach I was taking. I never had to bribe anyone to obtain
information for my research, nor was I ever asked by anyone to reveal
the identities of my interviewees and the content of the interviews.
To my knowledge, none of my interviewees has been interrogated by the
state authorities after our conversations.

I
know of several foreign researchers who followed a similar path to
conducting research in Tajikistan. They are anthropologists,
geographers, political scientists, historians. Most of them are at an
early stage in their careers, but have spent a significant amount of
time in the country, continue to visit it regularly and are truly
passionate about it. They have managed to conduct research on a broad
range of topics concerning Tajikistan, and some have co-authored work
with local scholars employed in official bodies. Aren’t these
collaborations — which we developed with local official bodies
during years of work — “academically
valuable or ethically permissible”?
Can our attempt to conduct research that is ethical and based on
thorough fieldwork, in full respect of Tajik legislation, no longer
be deemed “academically
valuable or ethically permissible”?

During
my fieldwork in Tajikistan, I have met foreign researchers who did
not want to engage with any official bodies. In most cases a certain
pattern can be observed. They would visit Tajikistan for a short
period of time, often without much prior knowledge of the country or
the local languages. They would come to Tajikistan on a tourist visa,
conduct a series of interviews and leave the country soon after. I
witnessed bizarre situations when these researchers were convinced
that, because they were in a country where corruption is said to be
widespread, they felt they could bribe literally anyone — including
waiters, to get a table in restaurants where all tables had already
been booked.

Conducting
research on a tourist visa is of course possible, and since the
introduction of an electronic visa system in Tajikistan obtaining one
has become easier. However, I believe that in such case the
researcher needs to acknowledge that they are breaching local
legislation, and this might have an impact on their safety, but
mainly it can negatively influence anyone they interact with. I have
heard of several cases when interviewees of researchers who briefly
visited Tajikistan on a tourist visa to conduct sensitive research
were later interrogated by state authorities. Obviously, this does
not justify the actions of the state bodies. Rather, I am drawing
attention to the issue of positionality of foreign researchers and
the hierarchies of knowledge production. First, there is the
instrumental approach to research as a data collection process, which
limits local subjects
to pure objects
of academic inquiry. Second, we need to ask whether it is legitimate
for foreign scholars to break domestic laws because they work at
western
universities and produce knowledge there. Is such knowledge
academically
valuable or ethically permissible?

Finally,
there is the issue of foreign universities seeking collaboration with
Tajik researchers only to “tick the box” of having access to the
field in order to obtain research grants from estern funding bodies.
Most of these grants go to research on topics that are a priority for
western
policy-makers, such as terrorism and counter-terrorism, Islam and
radicalisation, but raise the suspicion of Central Asian governments
(whether this is legitimate or not, it is a fact). While working in a
Tajik NGO last year, I came across three big European and American
institutions with no focus or expertise on Central Asia, which wanted
the NGO to collect data for their research projects on
radicalisation. We discussed these proposals in the office. My then
boss justified rejecting all offers thus: “It is them who need our
data, but we do not need their problems and their money, we are
economically fine.”

Karolina Kluczewska is a Maria Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow and a PhD candidate in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. In her doctoral research, she explores interactions of international and local actors involved in development aid in Tajikistan. Previously, she has worked in the development aid sector in Tajikistan, including International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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